When I 1st started here I only voted/commented on challenges I entered. Then at some point someone pointed out that if you vote in a challenge that you have entered it could be biased, I'd not even thought of that but I changed to only voting in challenges I hadn't entered. Then some time later there was discussion that a mature adult should be able to vote without bias even though they had a dog in the race so now I vote whenever I get a chance regardless.

I think everyone who participates should vote. I think that it's completely silly for anyone to down vote since there are no prizes. The whole reason we are here is to learn so down voting only confuses and taints the results and those who might do this get nothing in return. That said, I really don't think very many if any are actually doing that. Though I have heard the rumors. ;-)

I also think that everyone should comment on at least some of the images. I think if everyone commented on 25%, just about everyone would always get some comment.

I almost wonder if the admins should set up a rule that if you don't vote on at least 50% and comment on at least 10% that you are ineligible for a final score.

We're all busy. But we all had the time to take the shot and pp it. So we should at least have time to vote on the challenges we enter.

I'm with you here. If you enter I think it's a little bit selfish to expect everybody else to take time to vote if you don't vote yourself. At the end of the day, however many comments you receive, good or bad, they have zero impact to the result. The only thing that counts towards the score is the votes. If there are more voters, then if a few people do happen to show a bias the effect is minimal. When there are fewer voters the effect of biased voting has more impact.

I don't have much enthusiasm for shooting and entering challenges at the moment, but I do try to vote when the challenge topic is of interest (limited participation in recent weeks).

How do you see the stats of how many of each vote you've received? I've seen the average by participants vs non, but not seeing the numbers...?

I vote on the challenges I enter, simply because those challenges are more interesting. I've thought it through so much more than other challenges. I find it interesting to see what others come up with. The challenges that I don't enter, I find a lot more boring.

I'm never sure whether it bothers me that people don't vote on challenges that they enter. In a way it does, simply because I give a relatively higher than normal average. I'm affecting your placement in a positive way, but you're not giving any input on my placement (for better or worse). But then I look at the average given by participants, and so many times it's significantly lower than non-participants. In that case, it doesn't bother me at all that participants didn't vote. :)

Seriously, though... If you don't think you can be unbiased, don't vote. If you're doing it because you're lazy, get off your butt and vote and be part of the community. :)

I do miss the 100 vote check in days. That way the lovers or the haters don't skew things as much.

Solve for x, which is your total number of Non-Participants, V-x is your number of Participants.

Easy peasy.

Or you start at the 1/2 total vote count and multiply it by one of the other averages until you get something that comes close to a whole number and then creep up and down one at a time until you get a hit. The other total is Total Votes minus that.

I really wish more people would comment. I do like the votes. And then everyone in the challenge should vote. But why don't people comment. I especially think they should if they vote extra low or extra high. Why did you give me a 9 for this? Or why did you give me a 3 for that?

Another thing I wish people would do more of is describe how they did their photo. I always put at least a little bit in my description when I submit a photo.

I do understand that everything I am about to say is only my opinion but here goes...

When we have so few of us it's obvious that we will recognize some of the photos, even if they haven't been shared privately which I know happens too (it does with me and I've already told you I vote 100%). Can't vote without bias? What is that? We are all mature adults here.. you are voting on a photograph. Some people I really enjoy here take lousy pictures some of the time and I vote them accordingly. Some people I don't see eye to eye with take great pictures some of the time and I vote them accordingly too.

To anyone who votes based on WHO took the photograph.. get a life! This is DPC not some Olympic event.
And we all should be voting if we care about this place at all. It really doesn't take very long.
100 votes and 5 are biased (if that's what happens) is better than a total lack of votes for fear of doing something wrong. That's just depressing.

We need to do something to make this place lively again!!! When nothing changes from hour to hour.. no new comments.. no new votes.. everyone is going to stop opening up the page:(

With such little numbers and such a small community, it is becoming obvious that the scores don't hold much photographic merit, A few years ago i used to look at the front page and sometimes think wow I really don't like that style of photo, it's really static, doesn't hold much emotion for me or whatever, but at least I could sea the skill and the merit in the shot, take DrAchoo for example but there are many, even if it wasn't my thing I knew it deserved to be up there. What I'm about to say won't make me any friends but hey in this virtual world of false niceties and pseudo personalities I'm well beyond caring. Nowadays the front page horrifies me, it's astoundingly low quality and void of any photographic originality. I've been known in the past to say to fellow real life photographers, mostly French I admit: hey I belong to a great site called DPC and it's really helped me progress, you should take a look and see what you think, there's absolutely no way I would do that now, i'd be embarrassed to say I entered a challenge where the winning images were of such crap quality and of such silly content. I still like the idea of a challenge but to hold any value in the results here is pure folly, this has become a nice little popularity site with butt kissing buddies doing their stuff.

With such little numbers and such a small community, it is becoming obvious that the scores don't hold much photographic merit, A few years ago i used to look at the front page and sometimes think wow I really don't like that style of photo, it's really static, doesn't hold much emotion for me or whatever, but at least I could sea the skill and the merit in the shot, take DrAchoo for example but there are many, even if it wasn't my thing I knew it deserved to be up there. What I'm about to say won't make me any friends but hey in this virtual world of false niceties and pseudo personalities I'm well beyond caring. Nowadays the front page horrifies me, it's astoundingly low quality and void of any photographic originality. I've been known in the past to say to fellow real life photographers, mostly French I admit: hey I belong to a great site called DPC and it's really helped me progress, you should take a look and see what you think, there's absolutely no way I would do that now, i'd be embarrassed to say I entered a challenge where the winning images were of such crap quality and of such silly content. I still like the idea of a challenge but to hold any value in the results here is pure folly, this has become a nice little popularity site with butt kissing buddies doing their stuff.

That's very disappointing to hear. I sure hope it hasn't gotten as bad as you say. But judging with my own eyes, it's hard to defend against what you are implying. :-(

With such little numbers and such a small community, it is becoming obvious that the scores don't hold much photographic merit, A few years ago i used to look at the front page and sometimes think wow I really don't like that style of photo, it's really static, doesn't hold much emotion for me or whatever, but at least I could sea the skill and the merit in the shot, take DrAchoo for example but there are many, even if it wasn't my thing I knew it deserved to be up there. What I'm about to say won't make me any friends but hey in this virtual world of false niceties and pseudo personalities I'm well beyond caring. Nowadays the front page horrifies me, it's astoundingly low quality and void of any photographic originality. I've been known in the past to say to fellow real life photographers, mostly French I admit: hey I belong to a great site called DPC and it's really helped me progress, you should take a look and see what you think, there's absolutely no way I would do that now, i'd be embarrassed to say I entered a challenge where the winning images were of such crap quality and of such silly content. I still like the idea of a challenge but to hold any value in the results here is pure folly, this has become a nice little popularity site with butt kissing buddies doing their stuff.

my thoughts, to somehow make this positive... and I encourage others to think of ways to remediate this situation as well...

1. This may all be true. My suggestion was to try and garner more interest in voting..... one of the possible outcomes of this would be for those who do enter to be viewing all the other offerings. If everyone were voting, they might NOTICE that the entries all look the same and this might net some change.
2. If you had a dozen or so friends who are photographers you could encourage them all to join up. If they'd all enter a challenge together we'd have something different to look at. If they win, they'd all be on the front page!

The voting populace has changed. It's changed before. It will change again. And the results vary depending upon who is voting.

But I have always believed, and will continue to believe until I see any sign of it being different, that it's not a popularity site with butt kissing buddies doing their stuff,

It's a group of photographers who are trying. It's a group of photographers who are working with what they have and what they can.

Has the quality gone down? Yes. Because we lost a lot of really talented photographers who have moved on. And while I agree that I'm not telling people what an incredible site this is because of the sheer quality, I'm still telling people that it's an incredible site where you can learn a heck of a lot.

I'm at a 5.5 in junque. It's not a good photo, but I like it. Because I crawled around making myself sick trying to figure out how to do what I wanted to do. (I had a bad headache to start with). But I had a lighting idea in mind and I couldn't get it to work. I tried a lot of different methods. And while I didn't figure out how to do it right, I figured out many, many ways of doing it wrong. And I learned in the process.

Jagar would call the photo stupid, crap and frivolous. But I was doing it to learn. And I learned. There's a limit to how many epic photos you can come up with if you're trying to do every challenge. But if I only went for epic, I would have missed so much. Most of my learning has come from silly frivolous crap. Because I don't have a brain that can come up with epic 3 times a week. But when I see the epic (or conceive of the epic) once every 3-4 months or so, I am sooooo much more ready for it than I would be otherwise.

People have said over and over again that you get out of the site what you put into it.

People have said over and over again that you get out of the site what you put into it.

It's as true now as it ever was.

Couldn't have said it better, Wendy.

Yes, so true. And to my original point, one can get a lot out of voting (and commenting) as well. Having to view each entry while voting is well worth the time spent as a learning tool! And everyone else benefits in the process:)

The voting populace has changed. It's changed before. It will change again. And the results vary depending upon who is voting.

But I have always believed, and will continue to believe until I see any sign of it being different, that it's not a popularity site with butt kissing buddies doing their stuff,

It's a group of photographers who are trying. It's a group of photographers who are working with what they have and what they can.

Has the quality gone down? Yes. Because we lost a lot of really talented photographers who have moved on. And while I agree that I'm not telling people what an incredible site this is because of the sheer quality, I'm still telling people that it's an incredible site where you can learn a heck of a lot.

I'm at a 5.5 in junque. It's not a good photo, but I like it. Because I crawled around making myself sick trying to figure out how to do what I wanted to do. (I had a bad headache to start with). But I had a lighting idea in mind and I couldn't get it to work. I tried a lot of different methods. And while I didn't figure out how to do it right, I figured out many, many ways of doing it wrong. And I learned in the process.

Jagar would call the photo stupid, crap and frivolous. But I was doing it to learn. And I learned. There's a limit to how many epic photos you can come up with if you're trying to do every challenge. But if I only went for epic, I would have missed so much. Most of my learning has come from silly frivolous crap. Because I don't have a brain that can come up with epic 3 times a week. But when I see the epic (or conceive of the epic) once every 3-4 months or so, I am sooooo much more ready for it than I would be otherwise.

People have said over and over again that you get out of the site what you put into it.

I vote on every challenge I'm in and if time permits I'll vote on one or two more, time is a rarity at the moment so commenting is down but I will always vote on the challenges I've entered.
I'm in the next door challenge so I'll vote 100%, it won't difficult will it.
Votes count but popularity shouldn't.
You get out of this site what you put into it, be nice, agree sheepishly with the popular and don't ever step out of line and you'll be rewarded, even if we know it's all false, we'll feel good.

If I enter, I vote. If I vote, I generally try to comment at least 20%. None of this has made me a better photographer, and in fact I keep getting worse as both the Memories feature on Facebook points out and my scores here reflect, but hopefully some of you appreciate the effort. :)